


No Lazarus

by join_the_conga



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: AU, AU - no lazarus pit, Angst, Gen, I Overwrite Feelings, What Have I Done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-26
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 06:05:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11307267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/join_the_conga/pseuds/join_the_conga
Summary: Jason Todd is the second Robin to Batman. He was savagely beaten and killed by the Joker, and was subsequently replaced by Timothy Drake, the third Robin. Jason comes back from the dead and regains his faculties with the aid of Batman’s enemies abroad. This is a version of that story where Jason has nothing to bring his mind back to his body but Bruce Wayne—and the figment of the Robin that Jason once was.





	No Lazarus

Jason Todd crawled out of the ground on a Sunday. Gotham’s mid-April wheezing had cleared off the city’s blackened snow with small stutters of sunshine. The ground was moist, though, slick in the unthinking hands that pierced their way through wood and concrete and dirt to find daylight. Still in a slim cut suit with shirt sleeves adorned in Wayne family cufflinks, Jason shuffled down the cemetery hillside toward not the city streets of his childhood but to the cold manor in the distance where he had trained to fight and die.

The bat’s ground sensors caught wind of him first. Bruce Wayne, still slumbering past the sun’s peak after a night of black-winged patrol, was called awake by his proprietary alarm system as well as the faint cries of his butler who was racing up the stairs in a way that was neither graceful nor capital-B British.

After all the medical examinations, facial recognition cross comparisons, DNA lab results, grounds observations, and the whole ordeal of the investigation pointed to the one impossible answer of resurrection—only after could Bruce embrace Jason. The young man’s arms were limp, and Bruce hugged the filthy, broken body anyway. Jason was alive.

.

Jason was not quite alive. Alive enough for Bruce’s grief. Alive enough even for the more investigative Bat who lived within, whose guilt had drilled and drilled into the black ground of the cave, spiraling slowly toward the thin, filmy membrane that held back devilishness, from which there was no return. Crime had busied in Bruce’s inattentive despair. Vigilantism had grown more brutal for Batman’s pain. Justice was an excuse to punch, to break, and Bruce-the-man barely cared enough to leave the scene before his nefarious victims could be apprehended by official authorities.

Jason came back—alive, but not quite. He moved. He breathed. He ate Alfred’s fresh crescent rolls with near familiar voraciousness and pleasure. Bruce and Batman could calm.

But not all was fixed. Crime and crime-fighting were still darker, slower than they should have been. Tim Drake, for years tracking rogues through his camera’s viewfinder, knew that a flash of color and hope was yet missing from Gotham’s rooftops.

.

Jason’s healed-up hands would twitch for an imaginary tool belt when he was finally allowed to walk the grounds. Grappler on the right hip not there as his eyes lit upon an unoccupied balcony, from which mysterious cigarette smoke had once wafted late at night, even though Jason was underage and no way he would keep up his bad, stinking habits, not under Bruce’s roof, swear.

Bruce walked a few yards behind him. “Jason. You still want to perch, hm? Still a bird at heart.”

A pause. Jason threw his good hip to the ground to rub his fingers through the grass, neon from the previous night’s lightning storm. Red petals from the tired rosebush had blown to his spot, which he collected with patience. He couldn’t bend his legs. His bolted knee swelled with wraps that held together his most recent surgical replacements. So he had to lay on the ground, calm as long as he was on the right side of the turf.

“Does your head hurt, Jason? Do we need to go back inside?”

Jason reclined fully, belly to the earth, scarred face in dirt.

“Is the sun too bright? Let’s go back inside.”

Jason’s dented skull was bald in spots along the back, skin held taught by careful repairs made with medical grade thread and staples. A burn mark disturbed the hair growth at the nape of his neck, disappearing down the back of his shirt. His head bobbed, shoulders heaving with breath gently up and down in nonresponse.

Bruce cradled the boy for their retreat back inside. A real Jason Todd never would have let him.

.

Bruce leaned over the back of the cozy library chair that his ward refused to leave on the bad days. “Jason—say hello to Tim. He’s a friend.”

Jason was the conch shell pressed close to the ear—whoosh of stale air that feels like blue depth to some, nothing to others. Tim greeted him with a small voice. He waited to realize the color and vitality and charm of his darling Robin, and then he waited some more.

Six months, and Alfred woke at dawn to arrange a pair of silver trays—breakfast for Master Jason and a third Robin suit for the young Timothy.

.

“Best day... of my life,” said Tim.

Alfred said, “Yes, that’s what all you Robins say.”

“Really?” Tim asked. His eyes were wide, tracking his own hands they brushed the sturdy R on his chest. “Alfred. I’m really a Robin now.”

“It does seem that way, Master Timothy. Now allow me to fetch Master Bruce.”

Tim wandered to the training room. He performed high kicks in the mirrors, moved through his judo defense patterns and giggled behind the domino mask, watched himself bust up baddies who weren’t there.

Jason, slung over the pommel horse, watched too. His face was set with avid interest that had become alien ever since he dug himself out of the dirt. His fingers curled into the handles at his sides. He launched himself up, body curving as if there never had been breaks or trauma, legs tight to spring back upon landing for yet another leap, arms strong and outstretched and aiming for the little ghost playing hero in the corner.

Bruce came down the stairs before Jason had time to find the crowbar cast under the jacked up Batwing prototype. Tim, who had been trying to crawl away from the stain on the training room floor where Jason had left him in pursuit of a proper weapon, allowed himself to collapse as Batman subdued the not-Robin with the bloody knuckles.

.

Jason had the whole North wing to himself. Barred windows. Blocked chimneys. No tools or sharp objects. The heavy lamps were removed as well as the blocky framed artwork and the stone statues. Most of the rooms were bare except for the paperback books Bruce piled in for the young man in a makeshift library—one without shelves but furnished with plenty of soft cushions and blankets to spare. Whether the gifts were ever read was anyone’s guess, but Bruce knew Jason loved books and wanted to give him any comfort he could in his new space.

Tim had been moved to the last room at the opposite end of the manor. They wouldn’t disturb each other again.

“Jason, finish your dinner. Alfred made the ziti just for you.”

The plastic cutlery moved lazily over the paper plate, and Jason stared without focus at his mentor as he slowly, soundlessly chewed.

“Good. Good boy. I’ll get in some new Keats next week. You’ll like that, won’t you?”

Jason put down his empty plate. His back was hunched again, like Bruce hadn’t paid for the million dollar experimental surgeries that had replaced damaged disks, tissue, and nerves.

“I’ll be back in the morning. We’ll have breakfast. Eggs benedict sound good?”

Jason’s medicated mouth didn’t hold back the pearl of drool slipping down from the corner of his lips. Bruce reached out, patted it away with a handkerchief. “Eggs benedict. And I’ll read Byron. And maybe next time you can read me some Shelley. Right? What do you think about that?”

Jason blinked as Bruce kissed his temple. He stayed put as Bruce left, locks cranking and rattling behind him. He was still there the next morning. Bruce read Silverstein instead, to keep things lighter. He didn’t want to make Jason sad.

.

Of course Jason broke out. He was trained by the Bat. Tim—Robin—stayed behind in the cave, relaying coordinates into Batman’s com unit with just the barest breathless fear.

Batman found the not-Robin deepening gashes on the dead body at his feet. The clown, to his surprise, did not actually smile in death.

Thud. Swish, thud. Swish, thud. Batman turned off the com as Robin stuttered through questions thirty miles away in safety.

Bruce could only watch his other boy continue to swing a glittering crowbar through the air—swish—until the meaty impact at the end of the arc—thud. Drops of blood flickered as they appeared on the Bat’s cape and boots.

“Jason. Enough.”

The not-Robin yielded, the red and chrome implement clattering on the cement.

Jason smiled, and it was almost like the scars were gone. “C’mon, old man. This is the best day of my life.”

**Author's Note:**

> Do I have a longer AU follow-up in me? Who knows...


End file.
